Speed Up Your Sales Cycle With These 8 Simple Strategies

You may be looking to shorten your sales cycle. Why? Because the less time your leads spend in your funnel, the better. More ROI (return of investment) and extra time for some other prospects too.

That is the primary reason we tend to convert sooner our leads onto customers. And there are some strategies you can follow up to get this.

On your typical sales cycle you will have the following stages, as we saw a few posts before:

Awareness, Interest, Decision and Action.

This might be the sales cycle that sales reps love. Its length make this sales process perfect: you’ll be able to apply any scoring to nurture your leads (email opens, website visits) and this can help your sales reps to determine how hot is that contact and how likely will purchase your product.

Also, this sales cycle is ideal in case your prospect is willing to discover a software or a service for a team (such as Quoters). But, you can optimize that cycle with some ideas that we are going to present you on this post.

#1 Sell only to qualified leads

This is likely one of the strategies you should implement if you want your sales team to be fully motivated.

Why going behind a person that visited your website (and that will consider you as a spammer) when you may get most of that one who gave you an email to download a lead magnet or went through a contact form?

Yes. Qualified leads are great for sales reps and they will get the best of them while being motivated.

#2 Be transparent on your pricing

Yes. You are tempted to make your website visitors to visit and visit and visit pages. But, please, don’t do so.

If your pricing is inexpensive or doesn’t require any specific quotation by your side, potential visitors can get mad at you if they can’t find the right answers to their questions. And the price of your service is one of the most important ones for them. If not essentially the most.

And transparency does not refer to the price itself, but it is also important to make clear what they will get for their money: functionalities, limitations or tiered pricing are key for any customer when buying a new solution.

This will ease your sales cycle, and will make your prospects to consider your as an option. And it is also a good marketing practice. Be transparent on the information and your will see how your close rate increases.

#3 Clear expiration dates

Though this can be aggressive, a short expiration date can push customers to speed up decision making.

So, if you have a special offer that will be available for a limited period of time, let your lead know about it. And if your leads need further information or help, do not hesitate to assist them.

#4 FAQ pages

It seems pretty clear, but if your lead is prepared to close a deal, there will be some important questions that deserve a quick answer.

On FAQ pages, your prospects or leads can find all the information they need: how they can pay, cancellation and/or refund policies, limits, billing info or invoice downloading may be some of them. If you have all the answers in just one page, people will love it.

#5 Automation is your friend

This is important if you plan to nurture your leads.

Most of the CRMs allow you to trigger some actions depending on leads behaviour: visiting one specific page on your website can trigger an automessage on the website to your visitor. Or an email if you have one. And if they perform any action (or not), you will be qualifying them better and will increase the chances to close a deal if it’s sent on the right moment and with the right information.

#6 Show your availability to talk

Don’t start those boring back-and-forth series of emails to find a time for call. Just send a link to schedule meetings to your prospects and let them find the right moment to talk.

We, at Quoters, use Calendly to make call appointments. And it works perfect.

#7 Personalize your communications

Well, this is easy. As well as you can customize your proposals using placeholders, use your CRM data to customize your communications. Hello, John is better than a Howdy sometimes, specially if you follow the 5th step of this guide, automation.

Do not automate without customizations. As your leads provide you with some data, leverage of it. If you refer to them on an early stage using their name, position or business name, they know you are caring about them. So, use it. Personalize any email or automessage they will see on your website.

And if any visitor comes again to your website after some time, refer to them using a name. You will find out how some of your sales increase.

#8 Easy to sign, easy to close

This is one of our most beloved and outstanding features. If you are willing to close more deals, you will be signing some contracts, specially for B2B companies.

What if your customers-to-be can sign those contracts on their mobile using a finger while they are in one of those boring meetings? Or while commuting on the way to work? Yes, this sounds as awesome as it does.

On Quoters, online acceptance is included even on the lowest pack, but you can get the most of it if you add your electronic signature features. Your customers will love signing your proposals and contracts using their index fingers. And even more when they get a PDF copy of it on their inboxes.